Regulatory co-ordination in the EU: a cross-sector comparison

ABSTRACT

The article examines what drives national regulators’ attitudes towards and engagement with EU regulatory co-ordination as facilitated by EU agencies and offices. It suggests that a bureaucratic politics perspective can counteract shortcomings of explanations conventionally advanced in the EU governance literature by showing that national regulators’ attitudes towards co-ordination are driven by the aim to protect their turf. This is empirically demonstrated by a comparison of attitudes to co-ordination across maritime safety and food control authorities in the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany that draws on original document analysis and semi-structured interviews with British, German and European Union (EU) officials. UK and German food control authorities have a positive attitude towards EU co-ordination, but the maritime safety authorities contest it. While the food control authorities use EU co-ordination to enhance their bureaucratic turf vis-à-vis lower-level authorities, the maritime safety authorities perceive EU co-ordination to threaten their established position in the International Maritime Organization.

KEYWORDS:

• EU agencies
• food controls
• maritime safety
• national regulators
• regulatory co-ordination

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all participants of the panel ‘Regulatory Networks in a Multilevel Perspective’ at ECPR 2013 for feedback on an idea that developed into this article. I would also like to thank the journal editors and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Eva Heims is Fellow in Public Policy and Administration at the Department of Government of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Notes

1. Food risk assessment is underpinned by a transnational scientific community embodied in the international Codex Alimentarius Commission and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) at the EU level. However, food controls in the UK and Germany are carried out by local authorities, where it is more difficult to detect a transnational professional community.

2. We hence do not expect these findings to apply to national food control authorities that oversee a centralized food control apparatus.